The Eagle Has Landed: The Story of Apollo 11

by Jeffrey Smith

  Operation Paperclip, authorized by President Truman on September 6, 1946, was administered by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) and supervised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The Germans were officially classified as “wards of the Army.” Naval Captain Bosquet Wev, Director of the JIOA, had to strong arm American State Department officials, many of whom were troubled over admitting “ex-Nazis” to the United States as “invited guests.” Wev argued that the German scientists and technicians conscripted by the Soviet Union were a “far greater security threat” to America than those with “former Nazi affiliations” or current “Nazi sympathies.”

  The newly-arrived Germans were housed in a remote corner of Fort Bliss, occupying dilapidated barracks serviced by a community mess hall and recreation club. Military personnel were responsible for the security and well-being of the Germans, who had not yet been issued passports. Isolated from the civilian population, none of the immigrants were allowed to leave base unescorted. In large part, the sequestration was a safety precaution, as many civilians in the surrounding area were highly suspicious of their new, “ex-Nazi” neighbors.

  Von Braun tried to ease the fears of those Americans who questioned the wisdom of relocating his rocket team to the United States: “We are convinced that a complete mastery of the art of rockets will change conditions in the world in much the same way as did the mastery of aeronautics, and that this change will apply to both civilian and military aspects of the their use.”

  In 1947, von Braun was allowed to return to Germany to marry his 18-year-old cousin, Maria von Quistor, with the understanding that the couple would immediately return to the United States. During their honeymoon, the couple shared a house with American MPs, who were assigned to keep von Braun from being kidnapped by Soviet intelligence agents.

  In 1949, the German scientists and technicians were loaded on a bus and taken across the Mexican border at El Paso. The bus immediately turned around and came back through the border patrol station, where the Germans were issued entrance visas, which could then be used to apply for American citizenship.

  The influx of German ingenuity was not limited to the rocket scientists at Fort Bliss. After the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. military relocated nearly 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians to America.

  The White Sands Proving Ground (an annex of the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland), located 40 miles northeast of Fort Bliss, near Los Cruces, New Mexico, served as the launch site for the captured V-2 rockets. In the isolated desert of the Tularosa Basin, von Braun’ rocket team merged with Project Hermes, a guided missile program the Army Ordnance Department had previously contracted to General Electric in 1944, as an answer to Germany’s V-2 program.

  On April 16, 1946, the first V-2 rocket was fired at White Sands. From that date through September 19, 1952, 67 V-2s were launched into the New Mexico skies. Instead of explosive pay-loads, the missiles carried cameras, Geiger counters, and other scientific equipment in their noses. Mice and Rhesus monkeys were also sent aloft to monitor potential health risks of high speed travel at unprecedented altitudes. On July 30, 1946, a V-2 rocket reached the heretofore unimaginable altitude of 100 miles. That same year, another V-2 became the first launch vehicle to detect the ozone layer.

  A budget-conscious post-World War II Congress was reluctant to appropriate meaningful funding for rocket research and development, and the German scientists earned a starting pay of only $144.00 per month. Werner von Braun, himself, was paid $9,500.00 per year, with a $6.00 per diem while traveling. Dedicated to their dream of space exploration, the majority of the rocketeers turned down higher paying private-sector jobs and chose to remain as civil service employees.

  In 1946, Lieutenant Colonel William E. Winterstern, custodian of the German rocket scientists, posed a far-sighted question to von Braun: “If we could give you all the money you wanted, how long would you need to get man to the Moon and bring him back?” The rocket scientist, who was then a largely unknown figure, asked for some time to contemplate Winterstern’s expansive inquiry. Several weeks later, von Braun offered his answer: “Give us three billion dollars and ten years, and well go to the Moon and back.”

  As the United States established a fledgling missile program, the Soviet Union was busy developing and testing its own rockets. Like Wernher von Braun, Russian-born Sergei Korolev was a visionary, who had established the Group for Investigation of Reactive Motion during the 1930s. Korolev, commissioned as a Colonel in the Red Army, traveled to Germany shortly after the end of World War II and supervised the conscription of 150 rocket scientists and technicians. Unlike the United States, which allowed its German immigrants to take an active role in rocket research and development, the Soviets merely learned from their conscripts, before eventually sending them back home. Having salvaged but a handful of V-2s, Soviet scientists utilized German ideas and Russian know-how to develop the next generation of missiles. Korolev would eventually become recognized as the Chief Designer of the Soviet missile and space programs.

  Having few allies outside its natural boundaries, the Soviet Union did not have available air fields from which to launch nuclear-armed bomber attacks against the United States. To counter the superior American nuclear bomber force, the Soviets decided to develop nuclear missiles as a deterrent.

  With the outbreak of the Korean War in June of 1950, American defense spending, which had been significantly curtailed in the years following World War II, dramatically rebounded. As the war raged on the Asian peninsula, the Army missile program was infused with additional funding.

  In the mid-1950s, von Braun relocated to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where he was appointed Director of the newly-established Army Ordnance Rocket Center. Accompanied by 115 of his colleagues, their families, civilian General Electric employees, and Army personnel with expertise in math, science, and engineering, von Braun set to work developing Redstone, Jupiter, and Pershing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS).

  The influx of Germans into Huntsville transformed the sleepy North Alabama town into a mecca of scientific research and development. At first, the locals did not quite know what to make of their new neighbors, and jokingly referred to their rapidly expanding community as “Hunnsville.” In March of 1955, the German scientists, technicians, and their families were sworn in as U.S. citizens during a mass ceremony in Huntsville.

  The Soviet Union, which had already established its first missile launch site, the State Central Test Range, was hard at work developing rocket-propelled weaponry. Led by Sergei Korolev, in 1953, the Soviets unveiled their R-7 rocket. With 20 individual kerosene and liquid oxygen-burning engines, the powerful R-7 was capable of producing 1.1 million pounds of thrust.

  In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, wary of the escalating Arms Race, proposed an Open Skies policy to the Soviet Union, whereby the two countries would employ reconnaissance aircraft to monitor each other’s military build-up. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev immediately rejected Eisenhower’s proposal, believing the U.S. was seeking a convenient means of spying on its rival. By now, Khrushchev was convinced that missile technology would enable the Soviet Union to compete against the United States in the nuclear arms race. In 1956, the Soviet Premier, a master bluffer, boasted that his country was on the verge of possessing “a guided missile with a hydrogen warhead that can fall anywhere in the world.” Having established a frightening foothold, the Cold War would dominate East/West relations for the next half-century.

  Midway through the 1950s, America’s German-born rocket scientists had improved V-2 technology, producing the Redstone rocket—America’s first medium-range ballistic missile, and the vehicle that would ultimately launch the first astronauts into space. Missiles with nuclear warheads, however, remained only a means to an end for Wernher von Braun. A master publicist, von Braun correctly sensed the best way to promote his dream of space exploration was to reach out to the general public. In 1947, he had publi
shed The Mars Project, a novel which told the story of a mission to the Red Planet, stimulating the curiosity of America’s space enthusiasts. From 1952 through 1954, Collier’s magazine featured an eight-part series on space exploration. Von Braun authored the first article, entitled Man Will Conquer Space. In a later edition of the widely-read periodical, von Braun predicted a manned mission to Mars would occur within the next 25 years: “There are no problems involved to which we don’t have the answers, or the ability to find them—right now.”

  By the end of the decade, von Braun’s lifelong dream would finally come true. The United States and the Soviet Union would be head-to-head competitors in the multi-billion dollar contest to explore space.

  CHAPTER 4

  Beep-beep

  On October 4, 1957, the world was suddenly and unexpectedly introduced to the Space Race. On that brisk fall day, Americans were preoccupied with other activities. The New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers were deadlocked, one game apiece, in the World Series, while CBS television viewers were looking forward to the season premiere of Leave it to Beaver. By the time anyone in the United States was aware that the Soviet Union had launched a satellite, the spacecraft had twice orbited over North America.

  Sputnik Zemlyi, “traveling companion of the world,” was launched with little fanfare, but the world’s first satellite would dramatically change the dynamics between the two superpowers. Orbiting at 25 times the speed of sound, the tiny satellite appeared as a blinking light in the nighttime skies—a visible image of the Soviet Union’s head start in space exploration.

  Sputnik (its second name was soon dropped) was equipped with a radio transmitter, and its distinctive beep-beep sound was audible to short wave radio listeners throughout America. Following an elliptical 141.7 x 588 mile orbit, the Soviet satellite circled Earth once every 96 minutes and 12 seconds. Sputnik would remain in orbit, taunting the free world, until January of 1958, when it finally burned up re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

  President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to diminish the significance of the Sputnik launch, describing the satellite as “one small ball in the air, something which does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.” Eisenhower’s assessment, however, was in the minority, as reflected in the words of the powerful Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon B. Johnson: “The real meaning of the satellite is that we can no longer consider the Soviet Union to be a nation years behind us in scientific research and industrial capability.” The flamboyant Texan, known to Washington insiders as the Master of the Senate, issued a shrill warning to his countrymen that the Soviets would soon “be dropping bombs on us from space, like kids dropping rocks from freeway overpasses.” Many other influential leaders echoed Johnson’s warning. The Washington Post likened the Sputnik launch to the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; a point in time when the United States had been caught totally unprepared.

  Alarmists, clearly in the majority, declared the Russians had mounted an insurmountable lead in the Space Race. Many political and military leaders, all but hysterical, worried the Soviet Union would soon be launching nuclear weapons from space. England’s Manchester Guardian offered a grave, yet misguided warning: “Russians can now build ballistic missiles capable of hitting any chosen target, anywhere in the world.” A proud and bellicose Nikita Khrushchev stoked anxious fires burning outside the Iron Curtain, boasting that the Soviet Union could launch nuclear missiles anytime and anywhere it wanted.

  The profound practical and psychological implications of Sputnik jump-started America’s entry into the Space Race. Many politicians, fearful of being regarded as soft on Communism during the red-baiting, Cold War era, exploited the fears of their fellow citizens. On November 25, 1957, Lyndon Johnson initiated congressional hearings to determine how best to stimulate the country’s fledgling space program. In short order, Johnson, who had his eye set on the presidency in 1960, was appointed Chairman of the Special Committee on Space and Astronauts. Other presidential aspirants, including the Democratic junior Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, amplified Johnson’s clarion call.

  Led by scientist and engineer, Sergei Korolev, the Soviet Union was well on its way toward establishing a formidable space program. In 1955, construction had begun on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet-controlled Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan. Protected by heavy military guard, Baikonur was a top secret “closed city,” where in totalitarian fashion, research, development, and implementation of the Soviet space program were hidden from the world. Only the cameras of American U-2 spy planes were privy to the activities at Baikonur. With its powerful R-7 rocket having already proven that it could launch a satellite into orbit, the Soviet Union was preparing to leave its Cold War rival in the starting blocks.

  President Eisenhower, ever calm during real or perceived crises, was clearly aware that Soviet rocket technology was vastly overrated, and knew the so-called missile gap was politically-inspired fiction. Detailed photographs taken during U-2 flights over the Soviet Union had provided the President with evidence that Khrushchev’s dire warnings about the numerical superiority of his country’s nuclear missiles were largely boastful rhetoric. Unwilling to publicly reveal the clandestine nature of the U-2 program, Eisenhower played his top secret cards close to the vest, and chose not to refute the errant cries of missile gap proponents.

  Just under a month after its inaugural triumph, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, a 1,120-pound satellite (the size of a small car), transporting a canine passenger into orbit. Laika (Russian for “barkerÝ), the world’s first space dog, could indeed be heard barking over the satellite radio transmitter—proof positive that living creatures could survive, at least for a short time, in zero gravity. In spite of growing anxiety over the twin Soviet successes, the American press lampooned the satellite as Muttnik and Poochnik. Laika died after four days in orbit, either from oxygen deprivation, overheating, or poison injection, the latter of which the Soviets considered more humane, since the satellite could not be recovered. Laika’s death enraged American dog owners, who found yet another reason to despise the Godless Communists.

  During the next three years, the Soviet Union would launch more Sputnik satellites. None, however, would have the same startling impact as the very first one.

  America’s first attempt to join the Space Race ended in failure. Temporarily shunning the expertise of the German-born rocket scientists at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, the Eisenhower Administration opted to utilize the Navy’s Vanguard rockets to launch the country’s first orbiting satellite. A measure of anti-German prejudice still permeated the government’s leadership, so the “made in America” Navy rockets were given the first chance to make history. Werner von Braun shared his disappointment: “This is not a design contest. It is a contest to get a satellite into orbit, and we are way ahead on this.”

  On December 6, 1957, a large contingent of reporters and cameramen gathered at Cape Canaveral to witness the Vanguard rocket attempt to launch a 3.2-pound satellite into orbit. The rocket managed to lift four feet off the ground, before collapsing into a ball of fire. The grapefruit-sized satellite somehow managed to roll away from the launch pad inferno unscathed, prompting New York Journal American columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen, to quip: “Why doesn’t somebody go out there and kill it?”

  The media lampooned the failed launch as Flopnik, Kaputnik, and Stayputnik. Von Braun found it increasingly difficult to contain his frustration: “…We could have done this with our Redstone (missile) two years ago… Vanguard will never make it…We have the hardware on the shelf…For God’s sake, turn us loose and let us do something.”

  In November of 1957, less than a month before the Vanguard fiasco, the government had finally given a green light to the German rocket scientists at Redstone Arsenal, allowing them to participate in the satellite launch program. Eighty-nine days later, on January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched into space by a Juno rocket (a modified Redstone missile). The satellite en
tered an elliptical, 220 x 156 mile orbit, and traveling at 18,000 mph, circled the Earth once every 114.8 minutes. The cylindrical-shaped American satellite, 80 inches long and weighing only 12 pounds, and was mocked by Soviet Premier Khrushchev as an “orbiting grapefruit.” The American news media, on the other hand, excitedly exaggerated the significance of the orbital milestone: “The 119 days between Sputnik 1 and Explorer were as important to the U.S.…as any similar span in history.”

  The Explorer 1 satellite proved to be an unqualified success, orbiting the Earth 58,000 times before burning on re-entry in March of 1970. Among the satellite’s accomplishments was the discovery of the Van Allen Belt. Utilizing sophisticated sensory equipment, Explorer 1 verified that a zone of trapped radiation encircled the Earth at altitudes greater than 600 miles—a protective cover against potentially deadly celestial radiation.

  The struggling Vanguard satellite program suffered another setback on January 25, 1958, when the launch rocket’s first stage engine malfunctioned, 14 seconds before ignition. Finally, on March 17th of that same year, a Vanguard satellite was successfully sent aloft; the spacecraft, which has measured the Earth and Sun’s gravitational fields, solar winds, and atmospheric conditions, remains in orbit, yet today. The last successful Vanguard launch occurred in March of 1959, but the beleaguered Navy program’s success rate was far from spectacular; only three of its eleven satellites made it into orbit.

  On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 not only established NASA, but also mandated that “activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.” Keith Glennan, the President of Case Institute of Technology, was appointed as NASA’s first Administrator, with a firm mandate from the fiscally conservative Eisenhower to engage in “no reckless spending.”